In This Biography

BREAKING NEWS. Louisiana parents sue over placing Torah Ten Commandments Sharia in schools.

Nine Louisiana families filed a federal lawsuit Monday against their state’s education department and their local school boards challenging the constitutionality of a radical new law requiring that the Ten Commandments be displayed in public school classrooms.

The lawsuit was unveiled less than a week after Louisiana’s Gov. Jeff Landry put pen to paper and made his state the first in the country to require all public schools to display the Christian commandments in classrooms since the Supreme Court declared such a requirement unconstitutional more than 40 years ago.

The families, who are Jewish, Christian, Unitarian Universalist and nonreligious, alleged in court papers filed in the U.S. District Court, Middle District of Louisiana, that the new law “substantially interferes with and burdens” the parents’ First Amendment right to raise their kids in whatever religion they want.

Also, the new law, “pressures students into religious observance, veneration, and adoption of the state’s favored religious scripture,” the complaint states.

“It also sends the harmful and religiously divisive message that students who do not subscribe to the Ten Commandments … do not belong in their own school community and should refrain from expressing any faith practices or beliefs that are not aligned with the state’s religious preferences.”

Two of the plaintiffs are members of the clergy: Unitarian Universalist minister, Rev. Darcy Roake, and Rev. Jeff Simms, a Presbyterian.

“By favoring one version of the Ten Commandments and mandating that it be posted in public schools, the government is intruding on deeply personal matters of religion,” Simms said at a news conference. “This is religious favoritism that runs counter to my religion and faith.”

Roake, whose husband is Jewish, said during a news conference that they are raising their children in both faiths and enrolled them in New Orleans public schools seeking “a secular education that does not promote any particular religion.”

Joshua Herlands said he was appalled as “an American and a Jew” that “state lawmakers are forcing public schools to post a specific version of the Ten Commandments in every classroom.”

“These displays distort the Jewish significance of the Ten Commandments and send the troubling message to students that one set of religious laws is favored over all others,” Herlands said. “Politicians have no business foisting their religious beliefs on my kids.”

The parents are backed by the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and the Freedom from Religion Foundation. They are being represented pro bono by the Simpson Thacher & Bartlett law firm.

Attorney Jonathan Youngwood said the case has already been assigned to a federal judge in Baton Rouge and they are seeking a hearing this summer “so this law can never be implemented.”